HOUSTON – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott apparently said in a recent phone call that reopening the state will escalate coronavirus spread.
Newsweek reported the call recording was made on the same day Abbott decided to reopen businesses.
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The recording was posted on Tuesday by the group Progress Texas, but reportedly was recorded during a May 1 call Abbott held with state legislators to discuss reopening businesses closed by the coronavirus pandemic.
A Progress Texas spokeswoman told The San Antonio Current the recording was supplied by a person on the call to the Texas Democratic Party.
It’s unclear whether the recording was edited.
"How do we know reopening businesses won't result in the faster spread and more cases of COVID-19? Listen, the fact of the matter is, pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening – whether you want to call it a reopening of business or just a reopening of society in the aftermath of something like this -- that it actually will lead to an increase in spread," Abbott says in the recording. "It's almost ipso facto. The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility there is for transmission. The goal never has been to get transmission of COVID-19 down to zero.”
“It never can be to keep transmission down to zero because there’s always going to be with a rapidly transmittable disease like this, there will always be a level of transmission," Abbott added.
Listen to the recording in the YouTube video below.